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Those without room to spare can still do away with a traditional unit: simply mount your TV on the wall at a comfortable height —and that doesn’t necessarily mean eye level.

‘If you’re in a cinema, the screen doesn’t sit on the floor,’ notes Olga Alexeeva, who owns the interior design firm Black and Milk (blackandmilk.co.uk). She suggests hanging televisions around 70cm from the floor.

If you do place your screen on a base, remember a TV set that is wider than the unit on which it stands tends to look odd.

‘That’s the general rule: it will look unbalanced if you have a small stand with a huge TV overhanging it,’ says White.

A small visual trick, she adds, is to paint the wall behind it a dark colour — dark greys and blues are increasingly popular — which helps the screen to blend in when switched off.

Super slim: The wallpaper TV by LG’s is just 2.57mm thick and available from Selfridges

You could try using a sideboard as a base, which will offer storage, too.

For a recent project, Alexeeva sourced a sideboard 2.5 metres long, so it had enough space for the TV and some art as well.

A word of warning: traditional sideboards often stand taller than built-for-purpose TV units. Alexeeva suggests 65cm as the maximum height.

But manufacturers are responding to the changing market by creating long sideboards that don’t tower too high.

The Solia sideboard, by Andrew Piggott Contemporary Furniture, a modern-looking unit with a white, high-gloss finish, is 210cm long and just 53cm tall (£405.50, furnish.co.uk). For a more traditional, country-style setting, a trunk could be used in the same way.

Built-in: A storage unit with space for the TV by interior design company Black and Milk

A pricier option, but one that can downplay the TV’s presence, is to house it in a full wall system.

Many built-in units can work around a large screen, with modular options allowing you to pick and mix shelving and cupboards.

Poliform, of Italy, has an ex-display Skip wall system, finished in a dark oak veneer with sliding cupboard doors, in which the TV screen sits in a neat recess (down from £20,980 to £12,000 inc VAT, poliformuk.com).

Ikea’s modular system Besta is cheaper. It allows you to choose the number and size of your unit’s cupboards, add feet to increase the height, if needed, and decide on various overhead options.

A simple three-door unit, 180cm long (able to take a large TV) and standing 74cm high, is £295, plus more for additional cupboards and shelving (ikea.com).

But what if you want to hide the set away entirely?

Designers often turn to bespoke joinery, such as two folding doors that create a small cabinet around the screen on the wall, or cover it with art that slides upwards or sideways.

Pop-down: The Italian company, Maior, designs TV screens which come down from the ceiling

The Maior remote-controlled ceiling TV lift lets your screen descend from on high, where it’s integrated and aligned with the ceiling, at the push of a button, maiormover.it/en.

These days, we may simply pretend our TVs are something else altogether. Samsung’s The Frame set looks like a picture on the wall when not in TV mode.

You can rotate 100 different artworks or family photos on the screen, and customise it with snap-off frames in walnut, beige wood and white (£1,999 for a 55 in screen, johnlewis.com).

Other TVs present the screen as art: German brand Loewe’s Bild X, on sale next year, suspends the display within a striking thin, gold-coloured metal frame; while Samsung’s Serif TV — ‘I’-shaped in profile — has a textile back cover so that, placed on its stand in the middle of a room, it looks like a painting on an easel (from £499, samsung.com, in red, white and dark blue).

Or might we, in fact, go back to that little square box? Alexeeva is already seeing a swing in the other direction. ‘A lot of people, particularly young professionals, want a really small TV. Each wall is precious.’